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Sunday Reading
New Delhi, 2 June 2010
‘Green Economy’
HOPE FOR LABOUR
UNIONS
By Suraj Saraf
Two global studies, one done by the International Labour Organisation
(ILO) and the other by Worldwatch Institute (WWI) have held out promising
employment opportunities through “Green Economy”.
The study by the ILO on the impact of an emerging global
“Green Economy” has suggested that efforts to tackle climate change could
result in the creation of new “green jobs” in the coming decades. The study
“Green jobs, Towards Decent Works in a sustainable, Low Carbon World”
underlined that changing patterns of employment and investments resulting from
efforts to reduce climate change and its effects are already generating new
jobs in many sectors and economies and “could contain millions more jobs in
both the developed and developing countries”.
However, the study added that the process of climate change
already under way will continue to have a negative effect on workers and their
families, especially those whose livelihood depends on agriculture and
tourists. Action to tackle climate change as well as to cope with its effects
is therefore urgent and should be designed to generate decent jobs, said the
ILO study.
Though the study is optimistic about the creation of new
jobs it warns that many of these jobs could be “dirty, dangerous and difficult.”
Sectors of concern especially but not exclusively in developing economies,
include agriculture, recycling, where all too often low pay, insecure
employment contracts and exposure to healthy hazardous materials “need to
change fast.”
The study adds that too few green jobs are being created for
the most vulnerable “the 1.3 billion working poor (43 per cent of the global
working force) in the world with earning too low to lift them and their
dependents above the poverty threshold of two dollars per person per day, or
for the estimated 500 million youth who will be seeking work over the next ten
years.
The global market for environmental products and services is
projected to double from the present 1370 billion dollars per year to 2740
billion dollars by 2020, according to this study. Half of this market is in the
energy efficiency sector and the balance in sustainable transport, water
supply, sanitation and waste management, the study pointed out.
It said further that the sectors that will be particularly
important in terms of their environmental economic and employment impact are
energy supply, in particular renewable energy, buildings and construction,
transportation, basic industry, agriculture and forestry. The study suggested
that 2.3 million people have in the recent years found employment in the
renewable energy sector alone. Employment in alternative energies may rise to
2.1 million in wind power and 6.3 million in solar energy in 2030.
Renewable energy generates more jobs than employment in
fossil fuels. Projected investments of 630 billion dollars by 2030 will
translate into at least 20 million
additional jobs in the renewable energy sector.
Creating an environmentally sustainable economy has already
generated 14 million jobs worldwide, with the promise of millions more in the
21st century, says a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, a
research organization based in Washington.
Many new opportunities for job creation are emerging,
ranging from recycling and re-manufacturing of goods to greater energy and
materials efficiency and development of renewable sources of energy, the study
is confident.
“Jobs are more likely to be at risk where environmental standards
are low and where innovation in favour of cleaner technologies is lagging. Our
research shows that a huge potential to create jobs outside the extractive
industries exists. The challenge to society is to provide a just transition for
workers who will lose jobs in industries like fossil fuels and mining.”
Although there will be fewer jobs in resource extraction
industries and manufacturing products when goods do not wear out rapidly, there
will be greater job opportunities in repairing, upgrading, refurbishing and
recycling products. Remanufacturing products when their life cycle would
otherwise come to end typically allows 85% or more of the value added the
labour, energy and materials embodied in the product – to be recaptured.
Boosting the efficiency with which resources are used means
that business and households save a large portion of the hundreds of billions
of dollars that would otherwise go into purchasing fuel and materials, investing
the money from these avoided costs in more environmentally benign sectors of
the economy will generate more jobs than investing in source industries.
The WWI study went on to say that the industries that
extract and process energy and raw materials are among the most polluting of
human activities but provide only a small and declining number of jobs.
The study pointed out further that job creation is
particularly important in the developing world, where almost all of the growth
in population will take place in the coming decades. “The trouble is that human
labour appears too expensive while energy and raw materials inputs appear
cheaper.”
It further noted: “fiscal policy can be a powerful tool to
increase the productivity of energy and materials. Current tax system encourage
high resource use and discourage job creation. An ecologically driven reform of
tax policy would reduce payroll taxes while simultaneously raising taxes on
resource use and pollution.”
The study also underlined what could be an important
correlation between the labour unions and environmentalists. It states that the
labour unions and environmentalists could work together to build a stronger
political base for these policy changes “Environmental issues often translate
into health and safety issues at the workplace. Unions have a role to play ---
from struggles for improved occupational health and safety to demand for workers’
right to know clauses, eco-audits and other environmental provisions in
agreements”.
A just transition policy invokes setting up a fund to
provide income and benefits for displaced workers seeking a new career, tuition
support to pay for vocational and other training programmes, career counseling and
placement services, aid in relocating to find
new jobs and measures to help communities and regions diversity their economic
base, said the study. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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